


The Resistance: Names to know in the Kaiju War's final days.

by PunkHazard



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naomi Sokolov reporting from the front line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Resistance: Names to know in the Kaiju War's final days.

**February 24, 2025**

_ANCHORAGE--_ Meetings in Anchorage's Shatterdome begin when Marshal Stacker Pentecost enters the room. Tall and straight-backed in a tailored navy-blue uniform, at 35 the Marshal is a picture of steady authority, an unusual position for a man from the RAF's rank and file. To assume that's all he is would be a mistake; most people would recognize his name from the Kaiju War's early days, co-pilot with Tamsin Sevier (March 18, 1988 - July 17, 2024) in the Mark I Jaeger Coyote Tango.

Today, the meeting is held in the Dome's main hangar, where a hundred remaining staff-members are gathered. Two weeks ago, the United Nations defunded the Jaeger Program, leaving it with budget enough to continue running for eight months-- but only in Hong Kong. Anchorage-exclusive supplies were wrapped in plastic, then shipped in the week after the initial decision. In the span of time after that, non-essential staff were compensated, then let go; the remaining workers have been wiping computers, backing up data and packing equipment to be shuttered in storage or sold.

"Those relocating will report to the deck at 1600 hours," Marshal Pentecost announces to his congregation, "and to those who are not: it has been a pleasure and an honor to have served alongside you. We wish you and your families all the best, so treasure the time you have with them."

He intends to do the same. 

Marshal Pentecost lost his father at the age of twelve, and his sister was killed in the fight against Trespasser on K-Day. His mother passed away recently due to natural causes, but he had until then maintained a close correspondence with her. Those well-acquainted with him, such as Sergeant Hercules Hansen (who is overseeing shutdown in Sydney), will stress that although he professes to have no emotional attachment to the Rangers under his command, it's very likely that he does, in fact, regard them with a certain amount of affection. 

'But especially Mako,' Sgt. Hansen wrote in an e-mail, referring to Mako Mori, the kaiju attack survivor Mr. Pentecost rescued and subsequently adopted in 2015 who is not a pilot, but has graduated from the academy, 'she makes him real proud.'

Closing Day is expectedly not a happy time for those in the Anchorage Shatterdome, but the Marshal remains optimistic. "I have every confidence that we can hold the line from Hong Kong," he says while haggard engineers and technicians pore over HK-SD's blueprints and discuss the logistics of fitting so many people under one roof. "It's not the administration that keeps this program running, but the support staff and Rangers who train and work tirelessly so we can continue to operate."

At exactly 1605 hours, Marshal Stacker Pentecost exhales as the last few workers march out of the Dome and on deck, where a handful of buses are lined up to shuttle staff either to their homes or the airport. He flips a plain-looking switch in the fusebox, shuts and locks the apparatus, boarding a crowded airport bus to a smattering of applause and greetings from the passengers already settled in.

"Things will be different now," he tells them as the bus peels out of the Shatterdome lot. "We no longer have international support, nor will we have the same resources that have been provided to us until now. Nobody here intends to sit and hide behind walls, nobody here intends to give anything less than their all as we approach the possibility of even larger and more dangerous kaiju than we have already seen."

He raises one hand, silencing the ripple of anxious conversation that radiates from the back of the bus. "We are not here to survive, but to save the world."

**March 20, 2025**

_LIMA--_ Spanglish is the preferred language in the Lima Shatterdome, shouted across halls, in LOCCENT and in the chatter of the mess hall. Commander Tendo Choi, who hails from California but has been assigned to Lima since 2023, does not look like the sort of person one would expect to lead a Shatterdome. He sports colorful bowties and permanent dark circles under his eyes, a mug of coffee practically glued to his palm, but he directs the staff under his command with a light hand and exacting specifications. 

"One minute he'll say, 'great job guys,'" says Jesus Romero, one of Matador Fury's Rangers, "and then he'll say, 'but we need to recalibrate again because you twitched and now the display is half a degree off but everything else, it's all fine.' _Cabrón_ , it takes three hours to recalibrate."

Carlos Ortiz, Matador Fury's other co-pilot, concurs. "You should hear the engineering team talk about him," he sighs, "'Great job on the welding! Looks perfect! But you need to redo the entire left arm, two of the wires, they're touching and they shouldn't be.'"

Choi laughs when confronted by the frustrated co-pilots, and he thanks them for their cooperation and input. 

The commander was born in Beijing, to a half-Peruvian, half-Filipina mother and a Chinese-American father. They met in Hong Kong, Choi says, and he was raised in San Francisco by his grandfather while his parents remained in China. "I never actually knew his name," he says wistfully, "I always just called him _Yeye_ \-- it means grandpa, on my father's side. That's about the extent of my Cantonese."

His grandfather died in Trespasser's attack, one of the first victims to succumb to the toxic kaiju blue. The commander recalls with clarity the man's final words, the mantra he'd repeated to him as a child in times of strife. Bullies in the schoolyard, failed exams, a brief stretch in juvenile detention, a slightly longer stint in the California Correctional Institute, and a long, hard job search all elicited the same advice from Yeye Choi: "Endure this."

He did, and still does, from the time he joined the PPDC through his ascension to the rank of commander. 

On relocating to Hong Kong, Choi says that he's looking forward to it as he waves two lightsticks to direct Matador Fury's pilots while they use the Jaeger to load some of the heaviest machinery onto aircraft carriers, beads of a rosary looped around his wrist clacking. "I'd love to brush up on my Chinese, I've visited a few times but never spent much time out there. The Wei boys like showing me around, they think my godawful accent is funny."

He adds that he will sorely miss his wife, Alison, who has recently given birth to a boy, in the month it will take for him to have their apartment in Hong Kong's North district cleaned, furnished and made habitable. It is the furthest inland and, he says, the safest. As for the hour-long commute, that's a sacrifice he's willing to make. 

Choi continues, emphasizing that although he is still reeling from the United Nations' decision to cut off funding to the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps, especially when the situation has become so dire, he still has faith in the Marshal. In response to inquiries about his rosary, he says that he does not consider himself very religious, "but man, sometimes there's nothing you can do but pray."

**April 4, 2025**

_SYDNEY--_ Striker Eureka's mascot, a stocky bulldog whose face is also emblazoned on the Jaeger's chassis, greets strangers to the Sydney Shatterdome with a cheery bark and enthusiastic wags of his entire behind, stumpy tail included. "My son wanted to train Max to attack on command," says Sergeant Hercules Hansen as he clips a leash to the dog's collar and scratches behind his ears. "That never really worked out."

One of the best-known names in the PPDC, the sergeant has piloted Jaegers from every generation since the Mark Is. Using mechs from Lucky Seven to Striker Eureka, he has numerous successful drops under his belt and has conducted missions with more than half of all Rangers who have ever served, past and present. During Scissure's attack on Sydney, he flew a Blackhawk into the heart of the chaos to rescue his son, Chuck, in addition to a dozen other middle school students caught. His wife, Angela Hansen, died in the same incident.

Military bombers killed Scissure via nuclear warhead, three days after it emerged from the Breach.

"We're still in the process," Sgt. Hansen says of the slow but inevitable move from Sydney to Hong Kong, "Hydra and Vulcan are good to go in a few months, we're prepped for this dome to get shut down any moment now."

Striker Eureka is the first and last of the Mark V Jaegers. Her speed, strength and armor ratings top every metric available and she can lay claim to nine kaiju kills, plus assists on numerous others. Sgt. Hansen pilots the robot with his son, and though their relationship can be rocky, the elder Hansen insists that he is proud of what they have achieved. "We're not that special," he demurs, "just glad to hear our people think we're doing our job and doing it well."

Chuck Hansen is not nearly as modest, and many fans find comfort in his bombastic confidence, as evidenced on social media sites such as Tumblr and their Facebook page. He says that he rarely checks them, instead preferring to review engineering manuals and footage from previous drops. "Someone's got to pick up the slack," Chuck says, slapping his palm against Striker Eureka's enormous metal foot, "things've been going downhill for a couple years now, but as long as we're around, we're not going to let some damn kaiju get the best of us."

"He meant that we're going to continue the work my old colleagues have done," Hercules says in one long-suffering breath, "so their sacrifices won't have been a waste."

"Yeah, what he said."

"Chuck," laughs Vulcan Specter's Darel Ripley during a rare moment of downtime, "he's a bit of a hothead. Great pilot. Not a bad kid. Max is pretty cute, but he drools on bloody everything." 

"He's like Darel when we were that age," Darel's twin sister and co-pilot Noora adds with a mischievous smile, "I never knew whether to strangle him or hug him."

"Did quite a lot more strangling than hugging," Darel quips. 

"How else did you turn out to be such a respectable adult?"

"Uh. Mum?"

The Ripleys are Aboriginal Australians, from their mother's side. Both have been outspoken critics of the discrimination faced by Indigenous groups in the country, but since the escalation in frequency and strength of kaiju attacks, have redoubled their training regimen and shifted their focus. They'll have plenty of time to continue working with their community, says Noora, after they've closed the Breach.

**July 10, 2025**

_VLADIVOSTOK--_ The Lieutenants Kaidanovsky have not stepped foot inside the Vladivostok Shatterdome since December, when Cherno Alpha became the first Jaeger to transfer permanently to Hong Kong. The Russian 'dome remains operational and will continue to pump out parts for Cherno Alpha for another week; then the complex will shut down entirely. 

It has been ten years since Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky first became partners, and Cherno Alpha is the oldest Jaeger still in service. Already an icon of humanity's resistance against the kaiju onslaught, her pilots are themselves a household name, their faces familiar even to citizens who live on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, regions far removed from the Breach. Part of it could be their intimidating size-- Aleksis is an even 7'0", neatly-trimmed beard undyed to contrast with his bleached coif. 

Or it could be their past as two of the best prison guards at the camp in Krasnosyark. 

Sasha may not be as tall as her husband, but her presence overwhelms his; "Pilot on right side of Conn-Pod is dominant Ranger," she explains, "I have always been on right."

As for why they're back in Russia, the Lieutenants cite a classified mission before ducking into a Rangers-Only area of the Shatterdome. 

The head of Cherno Alpha's engineering team, a stocky man with a heavy stride, gray in his beard and large but surprisingly dextrous hands, directs a forklift toward the assembly line to retrieve a newly-minted beacon. At 58, Daniil Andreyev says through a translator that he had known from the first kaiju attack on Siberia that he would throw his lot in with the war effort. 

"Walls will not keep out kaiju if there are ten of them trying to get through," he says, "I have seen the plans, but plasma cannons take so long to charge and if you empty a clip, it will take too much time to reload. The Siberian Wall stood so long only because of Cherno Alpha; if you take Jaegers away, all you're doing is giving the kaiju something else to knock down."

Andreyev went on to cite several well-known Russian critics of the Wall Project-- one major point being that unless an entire coast is protected, any kaiju could easily breach the seaboard and move inland from somewhere else. Unsurprisingly, only the wealthiest coastal cities can afford a wall as a deterrent. "You are basically telling the kaiju to attack someone poorer," says Andreyev, "if your conscience can allow it, go ahead, but mine cannot."

He also raised a point most commonly found as a joke on Chinese forums when Australia completed the massive structure around Sydney: "If the Great Wall couldn't even keep people on fat little horses out, what makes Australians think a wall can keep out monstrosities the size of a building?"

(One can only imagine the explosion when the United States decided to follow suit.)

"In any case," Andreyev says, "the Lieutenants enjoy Hong Kong. They say the food is good, even if the Chinese have awful taste in music."

**December 25, 2025**

_HONG KONG--_ The faces of China's own Jaeger Program have not changed for six years. The most unique mech ever built-- distinguished by her three arms, vivacious red paint-job (a prosperous color in China) and mono-eyed Conn-Pod-- is piloted by none other than the Wei brothers. Identical triplets born in Shanghai then relocated to Hong Kong, they have remained quiet about their past but embraced the Ranger lifestyle with a fierce and professional enthusiasm.

"It's great that we can continue defending Hong Kong," says Jin, running a hand over the back of his close-shaven head, "our family and friends here and all over the world are still counting on us."

The eldest triplet, Cheung, passes their trademark basketball between his hands, then tucks it securely under his arm. "Crimson Typhoon will remain in operation until she can no longer operate," he says simply, "it makes no difference to us what the U.N. has decided when it's our city at risk."

The somber months before them seem to have taken their toll on the Weis, who were as well-known for their social media presence and variety show appearances as their piloting prowess in the Jaeger pilot hey-days. _'connecting with our fans like this has been great!'_ says one Facebook status update in both Chinese and English, posted the day news broke that the PPDC would no longer be U.N.-funded, _'we hope everyone will continue to support us and the PPDC.'_

Outpourings of support have continued even as interactions with fans and talk-show appearances dwindled. Pages originally peppered with daily-life selfies look more like a memorial wall lately: _'nova hyperion's pilots are in our thoughts... we hope 2 see @novapsoyi & @novaahnyuna again once they're back on their feet,'_ says one status, dated to the South Korean titan's destruction against Hidoi in Bangkok. 

_'the Kapu sisters were good friends of ours. we'll miss them. thanks to everyone who sent their support to the family,'_ says another, dated two days after Hydra Corinthian's loss against Mutavore in Sydney. _' & our best wishes to @ripleytwins. get well soon!'_

After Chrome Brutus's relocation to Hong Kong and her subsequent dismantling in the drop against Category IV Atticon in October: _'we couldnt begin to tell you how much we learned from ilisapie & zeke during the short time they were in hk, they'll be with us forever.'_

If it looks discouraging to citizens along the Pacific rim, the Rangers themselves say they are still undaunted, though the weight on their shoulders has understandably increased with only four remaining Jaegers. "We want to make the pilots we've served with proud as well," says Hu, "they would be disappointed if everyone just gave up."

Their most recent update? 

_'shaolin rogue and her pilots were an inspiration not only to us, but to all of China. we'll take it from here.'_

Of the Shatterdome itself, Cheung says that the Rangers, scientists and other staff who have arrived since Closing Day in Anchorage have made themselves at home and bring the complex back to life even as Jaegers fall and their crews disperse. 

Mako Mori, who those with long memories will remember is the only survivor of Onibaba's attack on Tokyo, is now the head of the Jaeger Restoration Project. Stationed in Hong Kong since her reconstruction on the last of the Mark IIIs began and frequent visitor to the Dome since even before then, she says of the Weis and the Kaidanovskys, "They understand that it's important to keep up morale in the Shatterdome, so they do their best despite the circumstances. Everyone here is grateful for their strength and encouragement."

The grinding, mechanical sounds of Hong Kong's Shatterdome are as grim as the faces of staff and Rangers residing in it, our final active line of resistance against the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. Almost a city unto itself, news and political interference from outside the Dome can shake its structure, but have remained unsuccessful in uprooting it.

Kaiju may have learned to adapt to Jaegers, but they'll find one final surprise coiled in this last stronghold of the Pacific Ocean: humans are more resilient than they seem.


End file.
